Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Christie Fitzgerald iExamen 2

Christie Fitzgerald

October 24, 2012

iExamen 2

After initially reading over this
second iExamen, I realized how interesting it would be to observe my actions
for an entire day. It’s not that I’m an unkind person, I would just describe my
personality as very sarcastic, and sometimes I talk before I think. I chose to
observe my behavior in speaking only kind words last Thursday, before my
friends left for the long weekend and I stayed on campus. I also knew that I
would be talking to my mom on Thursday, and I thought it would be important to
observe how she reacted to my choice of words.

When
waking up before class on Thursday, I made a note on my phone to remind myself
that I were to only say what is “kind, useful, and true”. I was confused at the
word choice of “true”, since I normally do not lie to people, and thought this
part would be very easy. Since my roommate is a light sleeper and generally
wakes up around the same time as me, I automatically wanted to roll over in bed
and groan about how I didn’t want to go to my sociology class, which I’m not
too fond of. However, I stopped and thought about the words I was about to
speak, and realized that although my professor was not in the room with me and
would never know what I was saying, it would be disrespectful to talk badly
about his class. I thought about it some more and realized how much time and
effort each professor puts into their class just to teach us. Instead, my
roommate and I discussed what our schedules were for the day, and I left for
class.

After
class I met my friends for lunch. My friends and I are not particularly “nice”
to each other, although all of us know we are only kidding when we insult each
other back and forth. I tried to not say anything sarcastic during our
conversation, and my friends looked confused by my responses to their comments.
I tend to use my hands when speaking, but I noticed that when I was more aware
of what I was saying, I didn’t use them as much. We laughed it off and they
understood once I told them about this assignment.

After
my Thursday classes ended at 4:20, I went back to my room, expecting a call
from my mom. Since my schedule has been so busy, we hadn’t had a chance to talk
for about a week, and she wanted to catch up. I’ve found that during most of our
conversations, my mom ends up getting annoyed with me and my sarcasm. This
time, I made it a point to be “kind, useful and true”. We never fought and got
through the conversation. A lot of the time our personalities clash since my
mom is a lot more sensitive than me, but this time our conversation worked out
nicely. From just that single conversation I found that using “kind, useful and
true” could help us not fight as much, and I should think about the cliché more
often, “think about what you say before you say it”.